Escaping the Towers of Silence (working title)

The Tube

I'll draw some wheels on this box and then I'll be a professional dirt bike rider. No, some animals, like I'm running a zoo. No, no, space controls for an ASTRONAUT! I scribbled away at the cardboard with my grey crayons, and within minutes had a crude set of buttons, levers, and other doodads to help me navigate the galaxies. After one long afternoon of intergalactic travel, my tiny body drifted off the air, leaving the ship on autopilot. Aliens passing by probably thought a Demian researcher had suffocated in there, when in actuality it was just a little kid dreaming about having a bonfire with his friends; a pleasant night out past the graveyard with the wind blowing, causing the fire to illuminate a... distant figure of sorts.

I can't explain the horrible pit planted in my stomach as that figure grew closer, but I can say it was the closest to... I've ever felt. I never saw his face, or maybe my mind erased it. But his horrid, cruel voice, the vapid sound telling me I should wake up before I forget how to, shook me to my core.

I thought I had all but forgotten that voice until today when I woke up in the very same cold sweat. Only this time, my heart didn't stop pounding when I realized where I was. He was here. I wasn't asleep. I could literally hear him down the hallway, or at least until the ringing in my head drowned it out.

Used to play pretend...

...fly it far away,

...laughin' at our face, saying WAKE UP

WAKE.. UP

"AUUUGHHHH!" I simply couldn't take it anymore. But that worked; the noise stopped abruptly.

"GAVIN?!!?! Gavin, what's- huh? What's wrong?"

"Oh, Amy, I-" Shoot. I probably scared her to the vials. "I just thought I heard something." She looks at me blankly. "Like, a, uh, voice telling me to wake up... I don't know, it was nothing, I don't know why I yelled, I'm sorry-"

"No it's okay. I thought you got injured. You probably just heard my music." She lifted up a small screen, skipped back a few seconds, and pressed play.

"Used to play pretend, give each other different names. We would build a rocket ship and then we'd fly it far away," sang the device. "Used to dream of outer space but now they're laughin' at our face; sayin' WAKE UP, YOU NEED TO MAKE MONEY." I flinched and felt a panic rising up in me again. That horrendous voice.

"Whoa, hey! It's ok, it's not anything bad. It's twenty one pilots! They remixed lines from Nico's speech at the Assemblage from a few years back," Amy reassures me. "Eight years ago, to be exact."

"Oh, I- I'm sorry," I stutter. "I don't remember that one."

"Well, you were six."

"Right. It just reminded me- I don't know. I'm probably just hungry." She raises an eyebrow, but points me to the kitchen. I exhale uncomfortably and turn to grab myself a banana. Why did that freak me out so much? People put the most random stuff in songs nowadays...

"Goooooooood day!" My thoughts are quickly interrupted by the most annoying morning news show in the universe.

"This morning on Good Day Dema, we're going to be taking a virtual tour around the square to see the set of marble statues our wonderful construction team just finished."

"Virtual tour? Sally, you're more 'down with the kids' than I'll ever be."

"Oh Dan, you just crack me up! Hopefully these new statues won't be following suit."

I can't believe Mom still turns this on every day. If I hear another laugh track I'm gonna punch the TV in.

"Mom, turn that down!" Amy calls from the other room.